The 6 best Activity Monitor alternatives for Mac (2026)
Live stats next to the clock, temperatures and fans, one row per app instead of a thousand processes, or a year of history: each of these answers a question Activity Monitor leaves open.
The best Activity Monitor alternatives for Mac in 2026 are iStat Menus (best all-round menu bar monitor, with sensors and fan control), Stats (best free and open-source option), Vitals (per-app figures plus temperatures and developer tools, macOS 15+), Gauge (per-app figures, a year of history and dev servers by project, macOS 14+), Sensei (monitoring plus cleaning and drive tools) and btop or htop (free, in Terminal). If you only need to find and quit a runaway app now and then, the built-in Activity Monitor is still enough.
Disclosure: We make Gauge, one of the apps on this list. We’ve tried to place it where it genuinely fits and to describe every app fairly, using each developer’s own site. Prices and features checked 28 October 2026.
Activity Monitor is good at one thing: showing every process on your Mac right now. What it doesn’t do is put a reading in the menu bar, show temperatures, remember what happened an hour ago, or add up the dozens of helper processes that make up one app. Chrome alone can run 30 or more. The apps below fill those gaps in different ways, so we’ve labelled each by the job it does best rather than ranking them on a single score.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Price model | Runs locally? | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iStat Menus | Everything in the menu bar, sensors and fans | Paid license ($11.99); weather is a subscription; also in Setapp | Yes | macOS 13.5+ (App Store: 14+) |
| Stats | A free menu bar monitor | Free, open source (MIT) | Yes (contacts its own server and GitHub) | macOS 12+ |
| Vitals | Per-app figures, temperatures and AI-tool limits | One-time; $9 with a year of updates or $15 lifetime (launch price) | Yes | macOS 15+ |
| Gauge | Per-app figures, a year of history, dev servers | One-time purchase | Yes | macOS 14+ |
| Sensei | Monitoring plus cleaning and drive health | $29 a year, or $59 one-time (3 Macs) | Yes | Not clearly stated; check the site |
| btop / htop | A process monitor in Terminal | Free, open source | Yes | Homebrew |
Prices and features checked 28 October 2026 on each developer’s website or repository. Check the official site before you buy.
1. iStat Menus: best all-round menu bar monitor
iStat Menus from Bjango is the long-standing answer to “I want to see what my Mac is doing without opening a window”. Version 7.5 is current on the developer’s site. Each stat is its own menu bar item with a detailed dropdown, and it covers more hardware than anything else here.
Standout features
- CPU per core, with efficiency and performance cores shown separately, plus load average, frequency and the busiest apps.
- GPU use, memory, temperature and frequency on supported Macs.
- Memory pressure, compressed memory and swap; disks with S.M.A.R.T. status and per-app disk use; per-app network bandwidth.
- Sensors for temperatures, fans, voltages, current and power, and fan control, including speeds that ramp with temperature.
- Battery levels for the Mac, AirPods and other Bluetooth devices, plus rules that notify you when a reading crosses a line.
Limits
- It’s built around the menu bar, not for browsing and managing every process.
- Weather features become a separate subscription after six months.
- The Mac App Store version can trail the direct one.
Price: $11.99 for a single license or $14.99 for a family license of up to five people, bought direct after trying it free for 14 days; $11.99 on the Mac App Store; or included with a Setapp subscription.
Who it’s for: anyone who wants every reading, temperatures and fans included, one glance away.
2. Stats: best free and open-source option
Stats is a free, open-source menu bar monitor developed on GitHub, and it’s very actively maintained: version 3.0.23 shipped on 25 October 2026. You choose which modules sit in the menu bar, and you can install it with brew install stats.
Standout features
- Modules for CPU, GPU, memory, disk, network, battery, fans, sensors (temperature, voltage and power), Bluetooth device batteries and a multi-time-zone clock.
- Recent versions keep history as per-minute summaries for the last 24 hours.
- Open source, so you can read exactly what it does.
Limits
- Its README says fan control is in legacy mode and no longer maintained.
- Apple silicon sensor names change with every chip, so sensor support can lag behind new Macs.
- The Sensors and Bluetooth modules are the heaviest; the developer says turning them off can cut Stats’ CPU and power use by up to half.
Price: free.
Who it’s for: people who want most of what iStat Menus shows, are happy to tinker, and don’t want to pay.
3. Vitals: best for per-app figures with temperatures
Vitals, from Fore Studio, calls itself an Activity Monitor alternative and starts from the same complaint as Gauge: too many rows. It shows one figure per app with helpers included, and adds menu bar readouts, alerts when an app misbehaves, and a set of developer tools. It’s sold directly rather than on the Mac App Store, because, as the developer explains, the App Store sandbox stops an app reading other apps’ processes.
Standout features
- Apps instead of processes, with history for every metric per app for up to a year.
- CPU and GPU temperatures, and fan speeds you can set.
- Dev servers and their ports, Docker containers, coding agents and AI usage limits.
- An MCP server and a
vitalscommand-line tool, plus per-app volume control. - Install by download or with a Homebrew tap; a 14-day refund.
Limits
- It needs macOS 15 Sequoia or later, so older Macs on Sonoma are left out.
- It’s new and closed source.
- The $15 lifetime price is a launch offer with a limited number of licenses; the site says it then rises to $39.
Price: $9 for one Mac with a year of updates, or $15 for a lifetime license during the launch offer, plus multi-Mac packs and a bundle with Flit and Levers.
Who it’s for: developers on macOS 15 or later who want per-app figures, temperatures and AI usage limits in one app.
4. Gauge: best for per-app figures, history and dev servers
Gauge is our app. It groups every helper, renderer, XPC service and child process under the app that started it, so about a thousand processes become a few dozen rows, each with CPU, memory, energy, disk and network. The whole Mac sits on a panel of 240° dials that stay neutral until a reading is worth a look (amber) or under strain (red), with thresholds you set. It needs no permissions, helper tool or administrator password.
Standout features
- Apps, not processes: Chrome’s helpers, VS Code’s terminals and the
nodethey run, and Xcode’s SourceKit each count under their app. Open any app to see its processes. - Up to a year of history in one small file with a size cap, and “while you were away” notes such as “CPU stayed above 70% for 24 min, mostly Xcode”.
- Separate menu bar items for CPU, memory, network, heat, battery, disk and GPU, each as a value, a graph or both.
- Dev servers grouped by project with their ports, uptime and an “idle for 5 days” flag; Docker containers if you use Docker Desktop, OrbStack, Colima or Rancher Desktop.
- A read-only
gaugecommand and MCP server for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. Quit, Force Quit and Stop happen only in the app, after you confirm.
What it doesn’t do
- No temperatures, fan speeds, Neural Engine use or per-app GPU time, because macOS doesn’t offer them to apps through public interfaces. It shows the thermal state (Cool, Warm, Hot, Critical) and whole-Mac GPU use instead.
- For processes owned by macOS itself it sees CPU and memory but not disk or energy, and marks those figures rather than guessing. On Intel Macs that don’t report energy, the energy figure is a labelled estimate.
- It doesn’t control fans, clean caches, change per-app volume or show Bluetooth device batteries, and it doesn’t track AI plan limits.
Price: one-time purchase, no subscription, no account: ₹999 for 1 Mac, ₹1,699 for 3, ₹2,299 for 5. Free updates and a 14-day refund.
Who it’s for: people who open Activity Monitor and can’t tell which app a “Helper (Renderer)” belongs to, and developers who keep finding old servers still running on port 3000.
5. Sensei: best for monitoring plus maintenance
Sensei from Cindori is broader than a monitor. Alongside live readings for the CPU, GPU, storage and battery, it includes a cleaner, an uninstaller and tools for your drives. If you were going to buy a separate cleaner anyway, it puts both jobs in one window.
Standout features
- A dashboard for CPU, GPU, storage and battery health (cycle count and capacity).
- A thermal view with temperature sensors and fan speeds.
- A cleaner for old caches, system logs and large downloads, plus an uninstaller.
- Drive health (S.M.A.R.T.), a disk benchmark and a switch for SSD TRIM.
Limits
- It isn’t a process manager: the product page lists no per-process or per-app view.
- The one-time license covers versions 1 and 2; Cindori says version 3 and later may be a paid upgrade.
- The store page mentions no free trial; a 14-day refund applies until you activate.
Price: $29 a year for the Sensei Plan, or $59 once for the Sensei License, each for up to three Macs.
Who it’s for: people who want monitoring, cleanup and drive checks from one app. If cleanup is mainly about developer caches, see our guide to Mac cleaner apps for developers.
6. btop and htop: best free monitors in Terminal
If you’re already in Terminal, these are the quickest way to see what’s busy. htop (version 3.5.3) is the classic: a scrollable, sortable process list with full command lines, CPU and memory per process, a tree view, search, filtering and kill. btop (version 1.4.8, released 25 October 2026) adds a graphical dashboard of CPU, memory, disks, network and battery above its process list, all drawn in the terminal.
Standout features
- Both start instantly and work over SSH.
- htop’s tree view shows which process started which, the terminal equivalent of Activity Monitor’s hierarchical view.
- btop shows GPU use on Apple silicon Macs, alongside CPU, memory, disk, network and battery graphs.
Limits
- No menu bar, no history and no per-app totals: helpers are still separate rows.
- btop’s README recommends a setuid install on macOS for complete process information, and its GPU support doesn’t cover Intel Macs.
- Neither shows temperatures on macOS.
Price: free.
Who it’s for: developers who want a better top and never leave the terminal.
The built-in option: Activity Monitor and a few Terminal commands
Before installing anything, it’s worth knowing what Activity Monitor (Applications › Utilities) already does.
Activity Monitor’s panes and views
Apple’s Activity Monitor guide covers CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk and Network panes, plus a Cache pane that appears once Content Caching is turned on in System Settings. GPU isn’t a pane: choose Window › GPU History. The Energy pane shows each app’s Energy Impact and whether it is preventing sleep, and laptops get the last 12 hours of battery use.
The View menu is where most of the hidden help is. All Processes, Hierarchically shows which process started which, so you can see Chrome’s helpers under Chrome, though their figures aren’t added up. Windowed Processes hides background services, and Applications in last 12 hours narrows the list further. View › Dock Icon can turn Activity Monitor’s Dock icon into a live CPU graph.
Terminal: a few read-only commands
None of these change anything. The busiest processes, sorted by CPU:
top -o cpuEvery process listening on a TCP port, with its PID. This is the quickest way to find a forgotten dev server:
lsof -nP -iTCP -sTCP:LISTENLive network traffic per process (press q to quit):
nettop -PmacOS’s thermal state and memory statistics:
pmset -g therm
vm_statThe catch is the same as with Activity Monitor itself: every helper is its own line, and nothing is remembered once you close the window. That’s the gap the apps above fill, each in its own way.
How we picked
- Still maintained and sold in 2026. We checked each developer’s site or repository for a current release.
- Native Mac apps, or tools that install with Homebrew, that run locally without an account.
- A clear reason to use it instead of, or alongside, Activity Monitor. Each pick fills a different gap: the menu bar, sensors, per-app totals, history, maintenance or the terminal.
- Prices as stated by the developer. Where something wasn’t stated, such as Sensei’s system requirements, we say so instead of guessing.
- No scores or ratings. We describe what each app does and doesn’t do.
We make Gauge. We placed it fourth, after Vitals, because Vitals covers more ground (temperatures, fans, AI usage limits) if you’re on macOS 15 or later. Gauge is the pick if you’re on macOS 14, or want an app that reads only what macOS publicly reports and says clearly where a figure isn’t available.
FAQ
What is the best Activity Monitor alternative for Mac?
It depends on what you miss. iStat Menus is the most complete menu bar monitor, with sensors and fan control. Stats does much of the same for free. Vitals and Gauge group helper processes under their apps and keep history, which is what Activity Monitor lacks most. Sensei adds cleaning and drive tools, and btop or htop suit people who live in Terminal.
Is there a free alternative to Activity Monitor?
Yes. Stats is a free, open-source menu bar monitor (MIT licence), and btop and htop are free terminal monitors you can install with Homebrew. Activity Monitor itself is free and already on every Mac.
Why does Activity Monitor show so many processes?
Modern apps split their work into helper processes: browsers and Electron apps run a renderer per tab or window plus GPU and plugin helpers, and macOS runs hundreds of small background services. Activity Monitor lists each one separately, so a busy Mac can show around a thousand rows. Its View › All Processes, Hierarchically option shows which process started which.
Can a Mac app show CPU temperature and fan speed?
Some can. iStat Menus, Stats, Sensei and Vitals all show temperature sensors and fan speeds. macOS doesn’t offer apps a public interface for exact temperatures, so Activity Monitor shows none and Gauge shows macOS’s thermal state (Cool, Warm, Hot or Critical) instead.
How do I find which dev servers are running on my Mac?
Run lsof -nP -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN in Terminal. It lists every process listening on a TCP port with its PID, which you can stop with kill PID. Vitals and Gauge show the same thing grouped by project.
Do system monitor apps slow down a Mac?
A well-made one uses very little, but reading sensors often has a cost. Stats’ own documentation says its Sensors and Bluetooth modules are the heaviest, and turning them off can cut its CPU and power use by up to half. Sampling less often and closing the main window also help.
Key takeaways
- Pick by gap: menu bar and sensors (iStat Menus, Stats), per-app totals and history (Vitals, Gauge), maintenance (Sensei) or Terminal (btop, htop).
- Stats, btop and htop are free; iStat Menus, Vitals and Gauge are one-time purchases; Sensei is a yearly plan or a one-time license.
- Exact temperatures and fan speeds need an app that reads the Mac’s sensors; Activity Monitor and Gauge don’t show them.
- Activity Monitor’s View › All Processes, Hierarchically shows which helpers belong to which app, without adding them up.
lsof -nP -iTCP -sTCP:LISTENfinds forgotten dev servers in seconds.